Once you have collected the required commercial data and assigned them to the respective software products, you can perform an expected/actual comparison to match the inventoried data against the commercial data. You are lucky here, because Docusnap includes predefined reports that will help you with this task. So there is no need to tediously create manual evaluations. But remember that this will only work if such data has been collected in its entirety and mapped in Docusnap.
Filling report templates with current inventory data
In Docusnap, you can select among a variety of reports. The “License Account Overview” report provides you with a tabular overview, contrasting the purchased software products with the existing software installations in your IT environment. The evaluations include totals and a graphical representation allowing you to view the current licensing situation in your company at a glance. This makes it easy to spot any under-licensing or over-licensing issue or to confirm that the license inventory matches the actual demand. The “License Account Product Details” report produces an evaluation for each documented software product. This enables you to investigate the licenses down to the individual system.
Discover how you can uncover potential for optimisation and cut costs
Now, it is your job to analyse these findings and use them to your advantage. It is very unlikely that all software products enjoy a perfect licensing situation. So you will have to analyse the evaluations to find potential for optimisation. We are talking about money here: Where would it make sense to enter into a maintenance agreement, where will you have to purchase new licenses to adjust the licenses to the current usage? Where could maintenance agreements be downgraded or even terminated? To find this out, you will probably have to collaborate with the corporate license experts because software licensing is a very specific topic. In any case, you need properly documented software licensing and maintenance agreements – you will not succeed.
License management is an ongoing task
Once the licensing situation is settled, you need to make sure that new software licenses and maintenance agreements are recorded promptly in Docusnap. Otherwise, all your efforts are useless, as the comparison will no longer provide correct results. So make sure that this task becomes an integral part of the new software purchasing process, i.e. any software purchase entails mapping the software in the License Management module. Do not wait too long after purchasing the software. Otherwise, there is an increasing risk that this maintenance task will be forgotten.
Phew! This was quite a lot of work to arrive at the first expected/actual comparison! But I told you before that license management wouldn’t be easy. Nevertheless, it is really important that you introduce and maintain license management as there is great cost savings potential, and at the same time, you will be able to provide evidence for audits whenever needed. As you can see, there is a twofold benefit to it.
